The Draught of Peace
by Supergirrl
Summary: One woman inadverdently overdoses....in a very magical way.


By posting this oneshot, I hesitantly dip my toe into the boiling cesspool that is the Harry Potter fandom. No canon characters appear in this, and there's no romance, just a little what-if story. I got the character's name from a random generator, but if some other character shares my character's name, I'm sorry, it was entirely coincidental. Flame if you must.

Disclaiemr: I do not own Harry Potter.

* * *

What a day. Her elderly mother was in St. Mungos, her son was missing, and she had just lost her job. Nana had been getting up there in years, but they hadn't expected her to become so ill. Her son-who she considered the only good thing that had happened to her family, her handsome, talented son- hadn't been seen for almost two weeks, and was considered dead. The job she had done for almost her entire life was gone, and her husband's meager income as a cashier at Flourish and Blott's wouldn't be able to keep their family afloat, especially now, with the Healer bills and paying to look for Evan. 

Melania Brocklehurst collapsed into her favorite, ratty old armchair. Her head was pounding, and she wished that she could just lie down in bed and sleep. Melania heard the tea kettle whistle in her decrepit kitchen, but right now, not even a cup of her favorite tea could sooth her. She needed something more effective, something magical.

The Draught of Peace. That would do it. Melania had been horrible in her Potions class, back when she was a student at Hogwarts, but this was the one potion she had been able to make adequately.

She hurried into her neat kitchen, and removed the teakettle from the stove, setting it on the counter. Pulling a small cauldron from one of her cupboards, she set it on the scuffmark-covered dining table. After a minute of rummaging through one of her kitchen cabinets, she came up with the necessary ingredients and assembled them on the table in neat rows, like soldiers in formation.

It was ironic that the woman who had been declared 'hopeless' in Potions could make this one fairly tricky one well, but nothing else.

Melania went to work, adding ingredients to the cauldron, humming a tune under her breath. The old potions book she propped up against a jar was tattered and a bit ugly, but served its purpose.

As she worked, her thin, mousy brown hair fell out of its bun, falling in her face. As she pushed it back, she inadvertently squeezed the small bottle of syrup of hellebore too hard, causing not two, but three drops to land in the cauldron.

Not noticing her error, Melania continued making the potion. When, at long last, it was finished, she removed a dark blue mug from another cabinet, and filled it with the Draught of Peace. The silver vapor filling her kitchen seemed a bit darker than normal, but Melania did not think that it meant anything, and after cleaning up the kitchen, she returned to her sitting room, and took a long drink of the slightly sweet potion.

After she had drained nearly half the glass, Melania settled leaned back in her armchair, feeling a soothing calm wash over her, making her want to go to sleep. A second later, she realized that this odd drowsiness she was feeling was not supposed to be happening, and she must have overdosed one of the ingredients.

Now fighting panic and an urge to sleep, Melania managed to get to her feet, knocking over the mug of potion, spilling it all over the floor. Stumbling into the kitchen, her eyelids grew heavy and her limbs weak. Her muscles felt loose as she rifled frantically through a drawer, trying to find her wand. She needed to wake up, no one was with her, and she knew that if she fell asleep, nothing on Earth would be able to wake her up.

Finally, her fingers closed around the well-worn wooden handle of her wand. Pressing the small tip against her chest, she whispered, "Ener-"

Her battle between staying conscious-Staying _alive_- and the sweet, blissful release of sleep, the sleep that she knew if she fell into, she would never wake up ended. The powerful, magically induced sleep overtook her. She crumpled to the floor, her robes pooling around her, her wand falling from her hand.

Three hours later, her husband returned from his job, to find his wife of thirty-seven years on the floor, sleeping peacefully.

And she never woke up.

* * *

Something about that one potion fascinated me, inspiring me to write a story about it. Review, I suppose. 

O.G.


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